Post-Armstrong Cycling Australia eats itself alive

Others in the Cycling Australia network also need to come clean about their participation - in many different ways - in the long-term corruption of Australian cycling. They need to reveal their roles in maintaining the Armstrong conspiracy and their role in inducting others into that system.

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Late yesterday afternoon Cycling Australia, the self-described “principal body for the competitive sport cycling in Australia” issued this statement “on behalf of the board to all members and supporters.”

In times of institutional crisis this is what we expect of our peak bodies – a settling statement that will calm the nervous, give hope to the doubtful and answers to the querulous.

Sadly, CA’s statement does none of that. We might expect better of an association that receives millions of taxpayer dollars a year to manage the various sports and programs associated with cycling in this country.

Its statement is part call to bloody arms, part slanging match at other professional cycling bodies, part sheer bloody-mindedness and part eating itself alive.

CA’s statement doesn’t offer much hope from the start: “It has been a difficult week, to say the least, for those who love the sport of cycling” and doesn’t get any more positive (excuse the pun) from there.

It offers a few paragraphs of self-justifying guff about how CA is “committed to the fight against doping in sport and in cycling in particular” and has a “zero-tolerance approach to any athlete found guilty of cheating through the use of performance enhancing drugs and to any other person who aids and abets that process.”

So far so very bloody ordinary.

The statement then raises the “key issue” of Matt White, who earlier this week issued a Media Release revealing that while a member of the U. S. Postal Service cycling team of which Lance Armstrong was the leader, he ” … was part of a team where doping formed part of the team’s strategy, and I too was involved in that strategy.”

Others say that targeting individual cyclists – whether in positions of power or influence or not – is wrong-headed and that a better approach would be to address the systemic and administrative failings of a system they were inducted into that gave them career and health choices they never wanted to make.

Australian legal academic Martin Hardie says that:

“Matt White is not the problem here. The administration of CA have buried their head in the sand for far too long. I have spoken to Matt about cycling and doping for many years. He is a person I have always admired and he deserves better treatment than this.. Matt White has done his best for cycling throughout his life and has worked his hardest to make sure younger risers do no face the same unfortunate decisions he faced.”

Hardie says that White’s inability to go public since Floyd Landis first made his allegations that mentioned him in the same terms as the recent USADA report into Lance Armstrong were more than likely influenced by the culture and advice of both CA and the International Cycling Union, the UCI.

Like many others, he says Matt White was also subject to intense pressure from the Armstrong camp which itself had jumped into the hip pocket of the UCI and many cycling federations around the world.

In an opinion piece published in the Fairfax press earlier this week he was scathing of the performance of CA and it’s treatment of Matt White and a denial of its own role:

“Not surprisingly, Australian cycling is in turmoil following Matt White’s admission that he doped. However, we are missing the point if we bring only the riders to account … It’s time the organisations who oversee cycling are held accountable for what has transpired, and nowhere is that more evident than here in Australia. I am in no doubt that Cycling Australia is part of the problem. For too long, it has been long on talk, but short on walk. They hired White when they knew he’d been sacked for sending a young rider to a notorious doping doctor. They knew he’d ridden on Armstrong’s teams during doping’s darkest years. They also knew when they hired him that he’d been named by Floyd Landis as having used drugs.”

At the time Floyd Landis made his allegations CA ran an intense campaign to try and stop him speaking at the New Cycling Pathways conference at Deakin University in Geelong in 2010. At that conference Hardie and his co-authors launched their year-long study into doping and pro cycling, with particular emphasis on the Australian peleton.

CA’s Statement then says that stronger tools are needed – including support for a greater role of the star-chamber like Australian Crime Commission and for an extraordinary extension of powers for the local anti-doping agency, ASADA, to compel witnesses to testify before it. CA also supports the criminalisation of doping, saying this broadened approach to doping will send a “strong message that such conduct is unacceptable.”

For many looking for “new pathways” out of the bloody mess that Australian cycling has fallen into criminalising conduct like doping is a crazy response and would be counter-productive.

A better approach would be a “truth and reconciliation commission”. But who to run it? For many the actions of CA and others long-associated with the administration of professional cycling in Australia should have no part to play in that body.

Martin Hardie says that:

The proposed truth and reconciliation commission would go a long way to cutting out the cancer that has eaten away at Australian cycling for far too long, but that body cannot be run by either the UCI or a national federation like CA if it is to be effective and credible. The riders and others must be able to not only speak freely about past events and decisions in their careers but also about how others have influenced them or forced decisions upon them.

Yesterday’s statement by CA smacks of an organisation desperate to maintain the last shreds of credibility in the face of an overwhelming storm that many reckon is largely of it’s own making.

Hardie again:

Matt White’s admissions are brave and selfless and others in the Cycling Australia network also need to come clean about their participation – in many different ways – in the long-term corruption of Australian cycling. I don’t need to name them as they know who they are. Not only do they need to reveal their roles in maintaining the Armstrong conspiracy and their own individual doping histories but just as importantly their role in inducting others into that system. The hypocrisy and double standards such as the savaging of Matt White is unacceptable if cycling is going to seize the moment provided by the Armstrong case and honestly renew itself.

One thought on “Post-Armstrong Cycling Australia eats itself alive”

CA is a bit like the Catholic Church, trying to manage their way out of a situation, instead of taking strong corrective action to ensure that the problem does not re-occur.Both organisations haven’t got a clue!